Stock Transfer Motivations and Processes

Promoting and delivering stock transfers is neither easy nor painless. For elected councillors, it involves exposure to significant political and financial risk, as transfer proposals are inevitably controversial and ballot endorsement can never be taken for granted. For senior management, the process is highly time-consuming and often necessitates extended working weeks and endless evening meetings. For middle managers and staff, transfer preparations bring uncertainty about job security generated by the prospect of major upheaval. For tenants, a transfer means a switch from a familiar landlord to an unknown and usually untested successor body. For central government, the post-1997 promotion of the transfer policy has required Ministers to face down vociferous critics (including party colleagues) and, again, has involved a degree of political hazard given the danger that — as in the Birmingham 2002 bid — a flagship project may be voted down locally. And, with transfer ‘transaction costs’ averaging £430 per home transferred (NAO 2003: 34), ministerial support for the policy surely implies a conviction that it generates substantial benefits.